Page:Clement Fezandié - Through the Earth.djvu/176

156 How matters would have ended it is impossible to say, had not our hero made one supreme effort, and managed to grasp the back of the lounge, thus stopping himself, though with no little difficulty.

"Gracious!" said he, as he pressed his hand to his throbbing temples; "it's lucky I managed to catch hold of that lounge, or I should surely have had an apoplectic stroke, with all that blood running to my head as I spun round."

The blood had, in fact, been unduly forced to his head by centrifugal force as he whirled around, and the problem now arose, how to get this, blood down into his feet again. Surely there must be some way in which this could be effected, and yet William was obliged to puzzle over the problem some little time before a solution occurred to him.

"I have it!" he exclaimed, at last. "The only way I see to get back the blood into my feet is to stand on my head! It does seem a curious remedy; but everything is so different here from what it is on the earth that in order to get the blood down into my feet I shall now be obliged to stand head downward, whereas, on the earth, to stand in this position would have just the opposite effect."